BSpaceThe British University in Dubai (BUiD) Digital Repository

Welcome to BSpace, the online institutional repository of the British University in Dubai.
BSpace provides access to the Dissertations, Thesis, Research projects, Faculty publications and archives of BUiD.

This study was conducted with the aim of finding the benefits of data mining on small businesses and specifically on the real estate sector in Dubai, and the criteria to be used when evaluating and selecting the best tools to consider for such businesses. While there are numerous studies on the best data mining models and their uses, even on certain industries, this study focuses on the applications more than the algorithms and models and their usefulness for small businesses specifically. Qualitative data was gathered from information found in relatively similar studies and from a real estate company in Dubai that allowed this study to be conducted on its databases with the help of its management and staff through interview, discussions, and direct implementations of the tools for testing.
The benefits of using data mining on such businesses was confirmed, a different criteria from the traditional kind for evaluating the available tools was used, and an existing cross industry standard for implementing data mining projects (CRISP-DM) was used to evaluate five selected tools for the business based on availability of models, price, platform, and popularity. The five selected tools that were evaluated for the real estate company are RapidMiner, Weka 3.6, NeuroXL, Knowledge Miner, and DMSK with RapidMiner leading the tools in advanatges for a small business in the real estate sector in the city of Dubai.